I saw 1 or 2 posts about this in the forums, but they didn't really have any answers, so I was hoping I could ask this question. I have a pcHD5500 running in a MythTV SVN 20071119 FC6 setup. I just got the analog portion working and can tune channels.

Now, I have the sound device setup as /dev/dsp and have the sound cable plugged into my Line In on my MBs sound card. However, it's on all the time, even if I'm not using the Watch TV feature. I can go into alsamixer and mute the Line In, but that doesn't help me when I want to record.

How can I get the sound working in a more "on-demand" type of way? Basically, have the Line In unmute itself when I tune an analog channel (either manually or when recording), and re-mute itself when not in use.

Thanks,
Harry

Posted: Sat Mar 01, 2008 11:50 am

rjp

Joined: 27 Feb 2008

Posts: 9

You can actually get the sound directly, as long as the cx88_alsa module is loaded. If it is, the analog section's sound output will be available (typically as /dev/dsp1). Take a look at /proc/asound/cards:

In my setup (this is with two HD-5500s on an Ubuntu 7.10 box), I needed to have the following in /etc/modprobe.d/alsa-base to insure that both cards would load in the proper order, and that the USB Audigy would be last:

Code:

options cx88-alsa index=1,2
options snd-usb-audio index=3

If you have just a single HD-5500, and no additional sound cards, you won't need to do that. Just configure your analog tuner to use /dev/dsp1 for sound. In my case, with two cards, the first card uses /dev/dsp1 and the second card uses /dev/dsp2.

Of course, that still doesn't solve the problem with the analog section activating into choppy audio/skipped frames mode - but that's a different rant. That problem isn't so bad for live TV (where I can switch out of analog and then back into analog), but it's a deal-killer for unattended recording purposes, so I've lowered the priority on the HD-5500 analog tuners since I still have an old Hauppauge bt878 card in a secondary backend that works like a charm.

_________________Oh no! You have walked into the slavering fangs of a lurking grue!

Posted: Fri Jan 02, 2009 4:30 am

TrinitronX

Joined: 20 Dec 2008

Posts: 7

I'm attempting to get the analog audio out of /dev/dsp1, but have been unable to. I can only get white noise out of it. Plugging the audio cable on the breakout cable into my sound card's line in results in A/V being out of sync (audio leading the video). Plus, the problem of the line input not being muted while watching ATSC broadcasts is there. I'd prefer getting sound through the card over the PCI bus rather than the sound card loop into line input.

I do have a card with the analog audio enabled, as evidenced by lspci: